


The Dead Man on the Bus

by liliaeth



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Terrorism, M/M, PDS Sufferers, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8892364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/pseuds/liliaeth
Summary: Kieren is on his way to art school, his trip is interrupted.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MeganMoonlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeganMoonlight/gifts).



 

 

Kieren stood quietly at the bus stop. He’d taken the train to Lancaster, and was now waiting for the bus to Leeds. The National express didn’t come to Roarton, not anymore. People didn’t travel like they used to, best to stay where you belonged, it was easier to protect yourself that way.

Other people waiting at the stop eyed him warily, but he tried to ignore them. He knew it might not be the best choice to go to his interview without either make up or contacts. But it was hard to force himself to go back to wearing the disguise, once he’d dared give it up. It was like living a lie, and he’d spent enough time lying when he was actually alive.  
When the bus stopped, he took his place in the front of the bus, put his bag out of the way and took another look at his portfolio. Simon and Jem had helped him with the pictures, and he had two of his newer paintings rolled up in a cardboard carrier. Just in case that wasn’t enough. 

He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this. He probably wouldn’t have, if Simon hadn’t convinced him to at least try. Art school had been his dream when he was a kid, he’d been accepted back then, ready to head off to college. But then Rick … left. And none of it mattered anymore.

He shivered, not sure what it was that he was feeling. It wasn’t really the cold, it couldn’t be. But sometimes he got these pricks of feelings. His nerves waking up, or his memories reminding him of how he was supposed to feel, he wasn’t sure which he wanted It to be.

A passenger was about to sit next to him, but the woman took one look of his pale face and froze. Kieren tried not to care when she stared around, looking for another place to sit. It was only when she found no other place available that she sat down, her eyes twitching as she desperately looked anywhere but at him, as she moved as far away from him as she could. Kieren tried to make it easier on her as he leant up against the window and tried to sleep, it would be a while before they got to Leeds.  
He’d been dozing off, he woke up as he heard several people shuffle with their bags when they got to the next stop. A few passengers got off the bus, while a few new ones got onboard. Kieren’s neighbor had grabbed the chance to take another seat. Even in the late evening, Kieren noticed that all five of the new passengers were PDS sufferers, or members of the redeemed as Simon and Amy would prefer him to say. 

They were all wearing make up and had their contacts in, but even in the low light of the bus it wasn’t hard to notice how off their skin tone was. All five of them sat in the front of the bus, one of them kept looking at his watch, as if expecting something to happen. Kieren sighed and closed his eyes again. He wished he’d taken his Ipod player with him, some music would have made the trip easier.

The bus barely left town, heading towards an emptier part of the road, when it happened, one of the new passengers got up from his seat and started wiping off his make up. Kieren stared at them in shock, when the guy started spouting off the ULA’s mantra, right out of revelations.

The driver tried to get off the road, give people a chance to run, but one of the ULA members pushed his head to the window, dazing him just long enough to push him out of the way.  
“Oh fuck.” Kieren wasn’t sure what to do when he saw them grabbing hold of small blue capsules, ready to swallow them.

People sat frozen, unsure of what was happening, Kieren was almost too stunned to act, but he got out of his seat without thinking. “You can’t do this.”

The guy was about to say something, when he noticed that Kieren was like them.

He seemed as surprised about Kieren’s presence, as Kieren was about theirs.  
“Join us, brother, help us spread the word of the Undead Prophet.”

Kieren rolled his eyes, as if that ever was going to happen. He got out of his seat and put himself in between them and the other passengers.  
“You can’t just kill people. ” he said, “innocent people. It’s wrong.”

“Why, because you let their brainwashing guide you as they turn our people into slaves with their give back scheme, as they experiment on us, and murder us as if we’re nothing. None of them are innocent.”

But all Kieren could think of was the woman with a baby sitting in the back of the bus, or the grey-haired man on the right that reminded him of his father. There were teenagers and children, people, old and young and none of them deserved to die, no one deserved to die. Especially not like this.

“I can’t let you do this.” Kieren whispered. Praying that he could do something, anything, that wouldn’t require him to harm anyone, living or dead.

“Then you’re nothing but a traitor.”

Kieren had heard that word, mostly used against Simon. He knew what the other man had been through, and it still amazed him that Simon had chosen him over everything else. So why let a word hurt, when it was a badge of honor instead.  
He didn’t get it, knowing what they’d done, all the people they’d hurt, how could any of them ever bring themselves to be like that again. He could see that the guy in the front had gone too far already so he turned himself to the others.

“You don’t want to do this. Isn’t the guilt crippling enough as it is? Can you really live with any more blood on your hands? With any more lives lost? After what happened, do you really want to go back to that… by choice?”

“Martin?” One girl said, a question in her tone. But Martin wasn’t listening. He pushed the Blue Oblivion pill in between his lips. Kieren could see the moment when rational thought left his mind, so he jumped on top of him, pushing him to the floor, ignoring the other man’s clawing at his skin.

“Look at him? Is this really what you want to be?” He held the other undead in the way of the four remaining ULA members. The driver managed to use that moment to hit the guy next to him over the head and hit the button for the doors in the back. With Kieren in the way of at least two of them, and holding down the third, the other two didn’t stand a chance to stop people from running. 

Martin clawed at Kieren’s face, but Kieren didn’t care, just pushed him down, while two other passengers came running towards them to help him out. 

The tides had turned and the remaining ULA members looked at the now no longer terrified passengers and took a run for it. Leaving their leader behind, black goop seeping down his nose. The guy managed to push Kieren away from him, getting back to his feet. Kieren could feel cold black blood seeping out of his head where he’d hit one of the metal edges of the chair. 

Kieren cringed when one of the passengers took the opportunity and pushed a walking stick through Martin’s eye. He knew it was self defense, he knew that Martin had brought it on himself. And yet the idea of being part of killing anyone, even in the slightest way, hurt his already broken soul. 

He stared up at the man, at the walking stick, covered in black blood, as the man came up to him and offered him his hand.

“Thanks kid, don’t know what we would have done if it weren’t for you. “

They were standing in the middle of the bus and Kieren hugged himself, defending himself from a cold he could no longer feel.

“Is he?”

“Gone.” The guy didn’t even seem guilty. And Kieren understood, Martin had tried to kill them all, massacre everyone on the bus, including the kid that had come on the bus along with the guy in front of him. But still… he’d been a person too.

“I didn’t…” he broke off his words, shaking, remembering Lisa’s eyes as she saw him, looked at him as the last thing she’d seen in her life. 

“Hey, it’s alright.” The guy helped him sit down on a seat and Kieren sat there, shaking. His hands clinging to the seat. “Are you hurt?”

He stopped listening, all he could see was the blood on his hands, the people he’d killed. He wished he could just disappear.

 

******

 

“What about him?”

Kieren looked up at the constable staring down, the man stood ready to grab his hands, force him to the floor.

“What? You’re going to try and pull in the one of the rotters that actually stood up to the others and saved all our lives?” A woman’s voice shouted out, it was the same woman who’d been so uncomfortable sitting next to him before. 

“Yeah, if it weren’t for him, we’d all be dead. Where were you guys when we actually needed you?”

Kieren slowly tried to get to his feet, looking up at the constables, he was still shaking. 

“You ok kid?” The man who’d murdered Martin came up to him, leaning over the edge of the seat in front of him.

“I just… I didn’t want anyone to die.” He meant to include the ULA members, but that was obviously not all that clear to the living.

“And good for that. What was that about, anyway?” Kieren wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “The shaking I mean?”

“I just… Memories. Memories of the Rising. They come back when I’m …”

“When you’re upset?”

Kieren nodded. 

“I get that. Bad dreams, even when you’re awake right? Guess it figures that as least some of you ro… some of you PDS sufferers feel the same way that us living do.”  
Kieren nodded. Wanting to tell him that they weren’t all that different. That just because he was undead didn’t mean he was some alien monster. But how could he get the man to understand that, when even some of their own didn’t. 

“There’s this girl.” Kieren whispered. “She was on a provision run. Her name was Lisa. I remember her blood on my hands, the fear in her eyes. The way she… There’s others, but she’s… She’s always there. She was the last one before the army, before I was treated.” Kieren was almost shocked how much just thinking of Lisa brought it all back, again, just when he’d thought he’d finally gotten, if not past it, but at least had come to grips with it. “I can’t understand how any of them could ever want to harm anyone ever again, remembering… knowing what we did. I just see her eyes.”

The guy’s face softened. “During the Rising, I killed this boy, a teenager. I had to, he was going after my wife. But then the army started spreading the cure, and part of me kept thinking, if I hadn’t killed him, he could have gone back to his parents, that I took a family’s son away, a second time.”

Kieren shivered.

“I’m guessing you’ve got a family?”

He nodded. 

“I’m glad you got to go home to them. I’m glad you were here.”

Kieren shivered, desperate to take those words to heart.

The cops seemed hesitant, unsure of what to do. Kieren got up from the seat he was sitting on. “Do I…”

“You need to come in and give a statement, mister…” He let the sentence trace off.

“Walker, Kieren Walker.” He pulled out his papers and gave them to the constable. “I was heading to Leeds, there’s an art school there.”

“You can call them to explain why you’re late, once you’re at the station.” The cop said before pointing the way out. Kieren trembled as he picked up his stuff, almost forgetting the tube with his art work, swallowing for air he didn’t need as he stepped off the bus. He flinched when he felt the flash of a camera. He tried to duck down, to hide his face and let the constables guide him to the back of the police car. He was almost in a fugue, unable to hear people, some shouting for answers, words twisting in his ears. For a moment, he was back in the dark. His eyes pushing the soldier’s faces in front of him, the ones that had thrown him and the others in their truck, ready to be delivered to the hospital. Hands and feed everywhere, and he’d been hungry, so hungry, all of them had been. 

 

*****

 

 

The cops held him for hours, time that seemed endless. And then Simon was there, he’d brought Philip with him. Kieren couldn’t even understand why, but apparently, he had some more legal understanding than any of the rest of them did. Simon held him as they passed the press. Letting Kieren hide in his arms. There were some PDS sufferers waiting outside, one spat at him, Kieren ignored the man, others, they didn’t seem to understand it any more than Kieren did.  
He could remember the rage, how it had felt after Gary had forced the Blue Oblivion on him. It fell beyond his understanding, how anyone, any of them could want to feel like that again. 

“I’m here.” Simon said. Kieren needed him, desperate not to think of Simon’s past, what he might have done before, before…

He shivered in the cold, Simon’s hoodie holding him warm. He shouldn’t feel, he still did.

The news was all over it, for days, weeks, there was talk of a medal. Kieren couldn't even begin to say how wrong that felt. He couldn't express it to Simon either. The other man still understood. 

Kieren knew that Simon was the reason that Zoe and the rest of them left him alone. To them, Kieren was a traitor, maybe to more of them. Yet to television, papers, to the living, Kieren was suddenly this bright shining role model. The good zombie. Kieren didn't even know what that was supposed to mean, for him or anyone. To the living, it made him a hero, even school had called him up, rescheduled his appointment, something they normally never did. In this case though, they felt it was worth it.

"You did the right thing, Kieren."  
His mom and dad were proud.  
All Kieren could see, was another dead body added to his list. There were too many already.

fin


End file.
